Can I close or finalize a DVD on Ubuntu?

Question

I have a DVD of video files that was burned but apparently not closed or finalized.

My laptop (Ubuntu 17.10.1) seems to work hard at reading it for a minute or two, but never actually acknowledges that there's a disk in the drive.

I assumed this meant it was corrupt or damaged, but the person who gave me the disk assures me that it's probably fine, I just need to figure out how to close it. Unfortunately, we no longer have access to the device that burned the disk.

Is there a way to salvage the videos?

Answer 1

I think that cdrecord (package now is called wodim) will do the trick.

Something like

wodim -fix

should work.